Aufbau (New York, NY)

Early Aufbau masthead (Leo Baeck Institute Library, C14)

The Aufbau was a journal for German-speaking Jews around the globe. It was founded in 1934 by the German-Jewish Club which was later renamed the New World Club and published in New York until April 2004. Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, and Stefan Zweig wrote for the publication. The original purpose of the journal was as a monthly newsletter for the club, which included information and helpful facts for Jewish refugees. From September 1, 1944 through September 27, 1946, the Aufbau printed numerous lists of Jewish Holocaust survivors located in Europe, as well as a few lists of victims. The Aufbau became one of the leading anti-Nazi publications of the German press in exile.

Digitization:

Aufbau, New York, 1934-2004, online: The Library of the Leo Baeck Institute New York has digitized all issues of Aufbau published from inception of the newspaper in 1934 through 2004 via Internet Archives. A few issues were contributed by the New York Public Library as well as the Mikrofilmarchiv der Deutschsprachigen Presse in Dortmund. Partial funding was provided by the Metropolitan New York Library Council.

An online index to personal names that appeared in Aufbau between 1941 and 2003 is available from the Aufbau Indexing Project.

Aufbau shuttered its New York offices in August 2004, but the paper’s story did not end there. The Swiss company JM Jüdische Medien AG acquired the paper and re-launched it as a monthly magazine a year later. JM Jüdische Medien’s US Editor, Andreas Mink, reflects on the history of the paper and its journey back to Europe in a recent article in the LBI Newsletter.